- Chino Amobi is the American rep for NON Records, an intercontinental collective dedicated to expressing the realities of the African diaspora through music. Often this leads to politically-charged and hard-hitting tracks, descriptions that fit Amobi to a tee. NON's mission comes through in Anya's Garden, an EP released in UNO's freebie series (the same one that introduced Arca back in 2012). It's a snapshot of what NON and Amobi are capable of, jarring and exciting in equal measure.
Anya's Garden is bookended by two versions of the title track, a classical piece made of stately strings and bells. They're appended with subtitles in classical music terms ("Prelude," "Fugue"), which is key to how they compare to the rest. Next to weaponized trap ("Prisoners Of Nymphaion"), autotuned chamber pop ("Roneqah Theme") and gorgeous soundscapes torn apart by machine gun fire ("Prayer (The Masque Of Anarchy)"), they feel stiff.
The EP's power is the juxtaposition of beauty and violence. On centrepiece "Mountains Of Villeneuve," the strings from the title tracks are assaulted by broken glass, high-pitched squalls and general chaos. It's willfully, almost decadently, destructive, and it's the purest example of Amobi's vision: a dystopian narrative, which is easy to parse even if you don't know about it. Amobi's voice is obscured so you can't quite make out all of the words, like he's struggling to be heard, and all the unrest that erupts is suppressed by the time we get to the second version of "Anya's Garden." The song's artificially perfect strings are almost menacing in their prettiness the second time around. Measured and conceptual compared to Amobi's past work, Anya's Garden doesn't have the visceral thrill of his best work, though it does have its moments.
Tracklist01. Anya's Garden (Prelude)
02. The Prisoners of Nymphaion
03. Roneqah's Theme (Vision of Judgement)
04. Mountains of Villeneuve
05. Prayer (The Masque of Anarchy)
06. Lady of Shallot
07. Anya's Garden (Fugue)
08. NEW YORK WILL NOT SAVE YOU